Thursday, June 30, 2011

Might not be updating tomorrow as I'm coming home late today and have to get up early for an early pictorial the next day...

Also just a reminder about Apex's crowd-sourcing project. They're still a third of their goal with only thirteen days left. And let's put it this way: for $1,000, you get to own EVERY book Apex has published and will publish in the future (Apex Book of World SF 2 *cough* *cough*).

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Acclaimed Australian author, Marianne de Pierres, and award-winning comic artist, Brigitte Sutherland, have teamed up to produce a new and exciting online comic. Entitled Peacemaker, the web-comic combines the supernatural, the futuristic, the Wild West and the Australian landscape in an exotic blend of storytelling.

Peacemaker introduces readers to park ranger, Virgin Jackson, and US cowboy, Nate Sixkiller. Dead bodies, missing spiritualists, an imaginary eagle and a wholly psychotic businessman, Joachim Spears, are just some of the things that force the two into an uneasy alliance to save Park Western from being closed. Trapped in the heart of a sprawling Australian super city, Park Western is the only piece of natural landscape left in the entire country, and Virgin will do anything to preserve it.

Marianne de Pierres has won awards for her science fiction and crime novels and had her work adapted for RPG and animation. Peacemaker is the result of Marianne’s long term romance with Westerns, which started many years ago when her father gave her a copy of Light of the Western Stars by Zane Grey. It was only a matter of time before she wrote one herself.

Brigitte Sutherland’s award-winning comic art has featured in numerous anthologies across the world. Brigitte recently released her first creator-owned graphic novel, The Adventures of a Homunculus. Peacemaker allows UK–based Sutherland to share the beauty of the land she grew up in while indulging in high adventures starring a sassy heroine!

Peacemaker is available for download from de Pierres’ website www.mariannedepierres.com/ peacemaker. There are plans for a limited edition soft-cover to follow. It is published under de Pierres’ own branded creative co-op, MDPWeb.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Alchemists of Kush is about two Sudanese “lost boys,” both who lost fathers to war and mothers to exile, both who were hunted and forced to become vicious hunters, and both who met mystic mentors who set them on the path of transforming themselves and the world.

One lost boy is Raphael Garang, who lives in a North American inner-city and is known to the streets as the Supreme Raptor. The other is Hru-sa-Usir, who lived 7,000 years ago along the Nile and was later known to the Greeks as Horus, son of Osiris.

From Minister Faust:

If my novel enters the Amazon Kindle Top 100, I will donate $500 to ship university textbooks to the Doctor John Garang Memorial University in the nascent country of South Sudan. That university’s library has no books. I’ve already contributed to this international book drive by donating around 300 books from my own collection, running a radio and print story on the book drive, and designing a poster for it. South Sudanese university students need our solidarity to build their economy and democracy, and I’m proud to do what I can.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

One of my biggest frustrations is that it's difficult to track down--or even record--Philippine Speculative Fiction. It's not just the print aspect (where periodicals have print runs of a few hundred and distributed in obscure venues) but even online publications are susceptible--even my old archives are irrelevant now as Geocities has closed down (taking with it a few important sites) as well as various magazines (which have either closed down themselves or transferred webhosts without re-archiving the old material).

Anyway, for the past two weeks, I've been trying to compile the bibliography of female Filipino speculative fiction writers. It's incomplete. Not everyone writer is covered. It's a work in progress and authors can help complete it by emailing me (charlesatan[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject "Bibliography"). (Male authors can also send me their bibliographies for a future archive.)

Publishing it today seems apt considering everything that's happened in the past week and the occasion today. It's not everyday that I manage to promote several agendas. I don't have all the answers but hopefully this is a start (and the bibliography list is awfully short considering the wealth of female writers that we have--please email me your bibliographies).

Again, A Bibliography of Female Speculative Fiction Writers. I do hope readers, writers, editors, and fans check it out (although I am aware of the paradox that for those books or stories without online links, obtaining them outside of the Philippines will be difficult).

Thursday, June 09, 2011

A lot of fandoms has this myth: that there is one book or show or movie or song that will convert anyone to their cause. It's a tempting theory and I've succumbed to this paradigm on more than one occasion. The cassette tape generation is quite familiar with this concept as audiophiles distribute mix tapes that's supposed to convey "this is who I am," the story of my life in two half-hour segments. Last month, I was told by two friends that Asterios Polyp is enjoyed by readers who don't usually read comics (and more than a decade ago, I gave away around a dozen copies of The Dream Hunters to friends and acquaintances). There will be multiple variations of this: "D&D introduced me to RPGs," "My Neighbor Totoro is universally loved," "The Lord of the Rings got me into fantasy," "If you're into horror, you must watch Ringu or read Uzumaki".

When it comes to genre fiction, the book you can recommend to anyone is the Holy Grail. Sorry, as much as I love Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tokien's writing was a poor fit for me. C.S. Lewis felt too didactic. Philip Pullman too polarizing. Some found J.K. Rowling too mainstream (as if that's a bad thing), too young adult (whatever that means), too mediocre (fair enough). For quite some time, A Game of Thrones was my go-to-book--until my Filipino teacher said he hated it because the modern language proved too jarring for his suspension of disbelief. Nowadays, The Lions of Al-Rassan and Tigana are the books I give to people who are looking for epic fantasy without the investment of reading a decade's worth of fiction. On second thought, Dune might come in handy as well.

But the problem is that none of those books will work for everyone. Different stories call out to different people. If I'm in the mood for love and a sense of loss, I recommend Tim Pratt's "Little Gods" or Dean Francis Alfar's "L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)" (although Peter M. Ball's "Say Zucchini, and Mean It" is catching up on that list). I can recommend Kij Johnson but each story works for a different reason: "Spar,""26 Monkeys, also the Abyss," and "The Empress Jingū fishes." There's also lots of short story authors (who are personal heroes) that I'd recommend--each one different and contributing something unique to the field: Mary Robinette Kowal, Jeffrey Ford, Claude Lalumiere, Paul Tremblay, Karen Joy Fowler, Theodora Goss, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand... (and I haven't even gotten to the local authors we have here that you never heard of: Nikki Alfar, Andrew Drilon, Crystal Koo, Francezca Kwe, Mia Tijam, Kate Osias, Ian Rosales Casocot, etc...)

Lately, I've been more of the type that gives a wide variety of books or comics, and then narrow down my recommendations based on how they react. Like Kelly Link? Maybe you should try some Aimee Bender of Theodora Goss. Like George R. R. Martin? Have you tried Robin Hobb or Daniel Abraham? Unfortunately, this also entails a lot of rejections. Sorry, that wasn't my type of book. It bored me. Not my genre. And you know what, that's fine. Don't take it personally (that's also valuable advice to writers). The point is to explore the boundaries of your friends and acquaintances, discovering what really interests them, or better yet, introduce something new to their diet. (Unfortunately, this results in me lending out or giving away a lot of books, with my intentions sometimes suspect.)

So, my question is, what are your favorite books that you automatically recommend to everyone you meet? Or are you an astute bookseller, probing for their tastes and interests before recommending a book?

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

When I worked on The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009, I was limited by the fiction available that year. When I worked on The Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, I was able to cherry pick stories throughout the years, and that's important for me because not everything published (especially here in the Philippines where you can have a print run of a hundred copies or less in a limited location--such as a convention) gains the attention it deserves.

For example, it was only last year that R. Zamora Linmark (buy his latest novel) informed me that Jessica Zafra released an issue of Manila Envelope, a literary journal, which had a special section on speculative fiction back in 2006 (the only online evidence I have is this post by Budjette Tan).

It's exciting finding these discoveries but it can also be disheartening as you realize you can't share it with the world (and such publications or stories aren't eligible for consideration in Year's Best's anthologies because, well, their date of publication has passed). A story might have originally been published several years ago but as a reader, it only matters that I've encountered the story today for the first time (some stories of course date themselves but some stand the test of time, or at least the initial decade).

I bring this up because Heights, the literary journal of my alma matter (I never became part of the organization), has made some of its issues available online. It's a lot of material to go through but so far I've only read the 2011 issues and they're fantastic. (Of course I'm also interested in digging through previous issues and hopefully find notable stories from authors I've previously encountered like Fidelis Tan and Isabel Yap.) It's exciting discovering new and unfamiliar names (although it begs the question, how do I encourage and nurture them, especially since I'm a complete stranger) but at the same time, you also realize this is occurring everywhere (Ateneo is not the only university with a literary journal) and this is one of the problems of "world sf".

Anyway, tracking all of this seems futile as crowd-sourcing a database for local speculative fiction isn't that effective--at least coming from me, and I've been attempting to do so for the past three years--mainly because I'm unknown in this part of the world. If you're so inclined to help, here's the form and here's the list for 2011.

The Philippines Graphic as of late seems to be delinquent in updating its literary section which is a shame. Anyway, I hope you check out the archive of the Heights Folio, and here's the list of this week's recommended stories:

"The Many Flavors of Paz del Rosario" by Kate Osias; Philippines Graphic.

I just want to give a shout-out to the Coode Street Podcast, which has released several phenomenal episodes this year. Now I've been listening to them ever since they debuted last year, and as much as I enjoy Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe's conversations (which is very much a tribute to the late Charles Brown), they hit their groove when they have guests on the show, and the dynamic changes dramatically.

Here's my top three episodes which I think everyone should listen to, at least if you're interested in what's happening around the world (and not just the US), gender, and literary criticism:

Sunday, June 05, 2011

How many times have we heard the statement saying that "I'm only interested in looking for a good story," with politics, agenda, race, culture, and author not factoring into the equation? Various critics, editors, and writers are baffled by the pervasiveness of this ideology (Nick Mamatas has a brief discourse on why a "good story" is not good enough). For me, it hearkens to one of the common tools (perhaps erroneously) still used in literary criticism and theory: Formalism. You only need to read the text itself; author, history, and context is discarded.

It's a lazy approach yet it has a certain appeal. After all, when we approach an unknown author or book--especially from a genre or field we're not familiar with--this is the paradigm we're working with. I don't care who the author is, when the story was written, or what the background of the material was. All I have to work with is simply the text. This was, for the most part, also the norm half a century ago, considering the unavailability of the Internet, and how the positive effects of globalization have yet to take place.

To a certain extent, "blind" readings also attempt to work within this framework, as the author's name is stripped from manuscripts and the reader or juror only has the text to wrestle with. The value of blind readings for me, however, is discovering the context of the story once you've accepted it as a "good" story. Who is the author? Under what scenario was it written? What was the agenda? It's also a great tool to expose the claims made by people like VS Naipaul. Naipaul's argument for example isn't new: science fiction already witnessed--in print--the folly of Robert Silverberg when it came to James Tiptree Jr.

But.

Formalism is an old theory and with it comes a certain idealism that is impractical. It assumes that there is a certain level of objectivity that can be attained when reading a text, perhaps the same assumption people have when it comes to history ("it's fact!") and the news ("gee, your choice if headlines is not biased at all"), when that's not the case.

Let me sum it all up with one word: Baggage. We all have baggage (emotional, cultural, political, religious) and this informs how we read texts. An atheist for example might interpret the Bible as fiction at worst, or mythological history at best. A fundamentalist Christian, on the other hand, will read the Bible as truth more factual than the latest scientific discoveries.

Allow me to spell it out for you: there is no objective story, whether it's fiction or non-fiction. It's not just in the way it's written but in the way we read it.

For example, if an alien suddenly arrived and acquired our literature (assuming it understands our language--and that's a big if in itself), the way I read The Lord of the Rings will be very different from the way they'll interpret it. Will they consider it as fact instead of fabulation? Or perhaps they'll root for Sauron instead of Frodo. Or maybe they'll just find the work simply too long and futile.

Just look at the headlines from a hundred years ago. What was deemed important at the time is irrelevant by today's standards.

I bring this up because I just watched X-Men: First Class last Thursday (warning: spoilers), and while it has a few flaws in logic (Cerebro, Magneto's helmet, the missiles at the end), it is for the most part an enjoyable film with lots of relevant highlights (the characterization, the interplay between Mystique and Beast, etc.). It has one significant problem though, although for most people (and reviewers, apparently), this is a minor detail. Which begs the question, how important are details?

My one problem with the film--and this is ironic considering the theme of X-Men is that they represent the outsiders of our society (I once saw a blog post label the series as racial minorities and gay people if they were White)--is how the people of color are treated. Guess what, they either die or join the evil side. It's not new politics but one that has been in place for the past few decades and its recurrence starts to become a pet peeve once you notice it. Some people will brush off this detail as a "minor flaw" in the story. Others, those who've either experienced this problem firsthand or witnessed this too often, will not simply let this slide as the dilemma jars them from the entire movie experience.

Another, more personal experience for me, is Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which is either the bane or the blessing of science fiction Filipino fans. On the surface, it's a book to be praised (pro-war politics aside), since it's one of the first science fiction novels to feature a Filipino protagonist (and this was how I felt when I first read it). Over time though, I started questioning this assumption. For example, the hero's culture is never revealed until the very end, although occasional irrelevant-to-the-story hints have been dropped here and there. If we strip out the character's name--let's make it Rick--there's really nothing there to suggest that he would otherwise be a Caucasian American. The only moment of Filipino-ness is his awareness of Philippine trivia, namely that one of the spaceships is named after a Filipino president. As far as the novel is concern, the character's cultural heritage (at least the part that's not American) did not have any impact at all (others are, of course, welcome to debate this thesis). Most non-Filipinos will probably skim this part of the book, but it's an important detail to me, as a Filipino.

Formalism has its place in critical theory but it's not the only tool we should be using, nor should it be an excuse not to eschew other paradigms. At the end of the day, I say Fuck good story, because that phrase doesn't really articulate what kind of stories interest you. It's like reading a book review that simply says the book is either good or bad.